EKGaming is an online US gaming retailer making some extraordinary promises. The company has become the first outlet to offer to share profits made from pre-owned titles with the game’s publishers.

Specifically, 10 percent of every sale goes to companies. It also claims that prices on these products will be around 20 to 30 percent lower than its competitors’. Apparently by cutting out the brick-and-mortar retailers, the company has saved enough cash to make this possible.

This unusual move has been made in an effort to combat the rise in online passes, pre-order programs and DLC, which EK says is all used games’ fault.

“Publishers are spending record amounts of cash on new game development,” explained CEO Mike Kennedy.

“This increase in dev costs is steering them in directions that don’t necessarily jive with gamers, causing them to take less risks on new and potentially exciting IP’s or game mechanics and sticking with tried and true properties that are more of a guarantee.

“We want to share our used game revenue with them so they can continue investing in new gaming experiences without worrying about the negative effects used games could be having on their operation(s).”

Sounds alright by us; will the retailer see success with this generous scheme?

Battlefield studio DICE is working on a new intellectual property, it would seem. Staffer Adrian Vershinin has let the bit slip on his LinkedIn profile (via).

The man has put his role on the project down as story and script writer from October 2011 to February 2012. And that’s that, nothing else is known. So whether it’s a triple-A release or a smaller mobile/arcade title is anyone’s guess.

Besides keeping busy with the upcoming themed Battlefield 3 multiplayer content, DICE has kept quiet for a while now. It has been rumored (and hoped) though to be working on the next Mirror’s Edge and Battlefield: Bad Company entries.

"More" (I use the term loosely, as it's an uncertain at this point) information (character related) has been revealed about PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. This information speculates (from photos of superbots gaming studios) that PaRappa the Rapper and toro will make the roster. There are some who believe that Sony has enough characters to support the rumored massive roster. However, that's highly unlikely (using only this gen's characters) with the limited number of "exclusive" (key word here) characters the PS3 has. Although, if Sony is able to bring back (PaRappa the Rapper: PSX) the last two gen's of PlayStation (PSX, PS2) characters, that makes a massive roster more likely. At present the roster (according to sources) is as follows:

Resident director Shinji Mikami is currently working on a new survival horror game, called Zwei. The concept art (pictured above) depicts a creepy environment. It's still unclear as to what type of survival horror game this will be. There are some comparing the concept art work to the game Shadows of the damned. They are even going as far as speculating it is the sequel. However, those who have played Shadows of the damned, know it's not a survival horror game. Therefore, Zwei is something completely different.

The most recent issue of Japanese mag Famitsu has teased the project, codenamed “Zwei”. It’s developed by Mikami’s new studio, Tango Gameworks.

As Kotaku speculates, this may be Mikami’s last project on directing duties, as the dev revealed during development of Shadows of the Damned that he’d like to direct one more game before moving on to focus on his studio. Coming from the man who has given us Resident Evil 4 and Vanquish, that makes us sad indeed.

This creepy live action teaser for Metal Gear Solid Rising: Revengeance points to some sort of reveal later this week.

“Corrupted transmission incoming from operative’s implant. Data integrity compromised. Recovery initializing on 4/30/12,” the video’s description reads, directing users to the game’s official website for access. It’s got a countdown on it and not a lot else.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is an action spin-off to the core Metal Gear Solid series, developed by Platinum Games for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It’s expected at the end of the year.

Watch Max Payne shoot a rather sexy pistol in the video and screenshots below the break. Both feature the 1911 semi-automatic making its return in Max Payne 3. The pistol features “machine-gun like firing rates,” plus the ability to dual-wield thanks to being light-weight despite its large frame. Considering the pistol is a .45, it packs enough oomph to put large holes in your enemies torso so expect them to bleed – a lot. If you head on over to the game’s website, you can view 360 renders of the weapon.

Tecmo Koei’s released new footage of Dead or Alive 5 footage today, showing Christie go face-to-face against Bayman. Get the video below the break. The Team Ninja fighter launches worldwide in September for PS3 and 360.

Speaking with Digital Spy, Spector said that while he’s more into design over tech, he’s “a little scared” that once “Pixar-quality graphics with interactivity,” are achieved, games could cost in upwards of $200 million to develop.

“Honestly? I don’t care much about hardware,” said Spector. “Nintendo games are some of the best games in the world and from a more graphical standpoint, the Wii can’t do what a PS3 or 360 can do. It’s about design and not so much about tech for me. Honestly, I’m more scared about what will come next than I am excited.

“Once we can do Pixar-quality graphics rendered in real time with interactivity, I could see games costing $200 million to make and all of a sudden you have to sell a lot of games just to break even, so I’m a little worried someone’s going to do that.

“Someone’s going to spend… well, there are already people spending $100 million on games, that’s not even insane anymore. $200, 300 million games, I’m a little scared about that, there aren’t a lot of companies that have the resources or the courage to spend that much. So my gut’s in a bit of a knot about that but whatever comes along I’ll just make games that work on that platform, I don’t think about hardware too much.” Spector said platform power is starting to outstrip the size of the audience, and $150 is just too much to charge someone for a game.

“If you’re spending $200 million on a game and you’re making $60 on 20 million copies sold, oh wait,

oh wait, you’re losing money if you’re the best-selling game of all time basically, right? I don’t know how the business works anymore, that’s the problem,” he said.

“It already takes three years to make a game, when all of a sudden creating assets at an even higher level of quality and animations that are even a higher level of quality, I don’t know how we’re going to do it. We’ll figure it out but right now I’m content where I am.”

Epic Mickey 2 is out in the fall for Mac, PC, PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360. A 3DS version subtitled Power of Illusion is in the works as well.